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15-letter words containing p, i, c, o, u

  • compound engine — a steam engine in which the steam is expanded in more than one stage, first in a high-pressure cylinder and then in one or more low-pressure cylinders
  • computationally — from a computational point of view
  • computer cookie — HTTP cookie
  • computer dating — the use of computers by dating agencies to match their clients
  • computer ethics — (philosophy)   Ethics is the field of study that is concerned with questions of value, that is, judgments about what human behaviour is "good" or "bad". Ethical judgments are no different in the area of computing from those in any other area. Computers raise problems of privacy, ownership, theft, and power, to name but a few. Computer ethics can be grounded in one of four basic world-views: Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism, or Existentialism. Idealists believe that reality is basically ideas and that ethics therefore involves conforming to ideals. Realists believe that reality is basically nature and that ethics therefore involves acting according to what is natural. Pragmatists believe that reality is not fixed but is in process and that ethics therefore is practical (that is, concerned with what will produce socially-desired results). Existentialists believe reality is self-defined and that ethics therefore is individual (that is, concerned only with one's own conscience). Idealism and Realism can be considered ABSOLUTIST worldviews because they are based on something fixed (that is, ideas or nature, respectively). Pragmatism and Existentialism can be considered RELATIVIST worldviews because they are based or something relational (that is, society or the individual, respectively). Thus ethical judgments will vary, depending on the judge's world-view. Some examples: First consider theft. Suppose a university's computer is used for sending an e-mail message to a friend or for conducting a full-blown private business (billing, payroll, inventory, etc.). The absolutist would say that both activities are unethical (while recognising a difference in the amount of wrong being done). A relativist might say that the latter activities were wrong because they tied up too much memory and slowed down the machine, but the e-mail message wasn't wrong because it had no significant effect on operations. Next consider privacy. An instructor uses her account to acquire the cumulative grade point average of a student who is in a class which she instructs. She obtained the password for this restricted information from someone in the Records Office who erroneously thought that she was the student's advisor. The absolutist would probably say that the instructor acted wrongly, since the only person who is entitled to this information is the student and his or her advisor. The relativist would probably ask why the instructor wanted the information. If she replied that she wanted it to be sure that her grading of the student was consistent with the student's overall academic performance record, the relativist might agree that such use was acceptable. Finally, consider power. At a particular university, if a professor wants a computer account, all she or he need do is request one but a student must obtain faculty sponsorship in order to receive an account. An absolutist (because of a proclivity for hierarchical thinking) might not have a problem with this divergence in procedure. A relativist, on the other hand, might question what makes the two situations essentially different (e.g. are faculty assumed to have more need for computers than students? Are students more likely to cause problems than faculty? Is this a hold-over from the days of "in loco parentis"?).
  • computer vision — a robot analogue of human vision in which information about the environment is received by one or more video cameras and processed by computer: used in navigation by robots, in the control of automated production lines, etc.
  • computer-phobia — a person who distrusts or is intimidated by computers.
  • computerisation — (chiefly, British) alternative spelling of computerization.
  • computerization — to control, perform, process, or store (a system, operation, or information) by means of or in an electronic computer or computers.
  • conceptualising — Present participle of conceptualise.
  • conceptualistic — Of or pertaining to conceptualism.
  • conceptualizing — Present participle of conceptualize.
  • concurrent lisp — (language)   A concurrent version of Lisp. Sugimoto et al implemented an interpreter on a "large scale computer" and were planning to implement it on multiple microprocessors.
  • connoisseurship — a person who is especially competent to pass critical judgments in an art, particularly one of the fine arts, or in matters of taste: a connoisseur of modern art.
  • conspicuousness — Openness or exposure to the view; a state of being clearly visible.
  • consumption tax — a tax, as a sales tax, levied on consumer goods or services at the time of sale.
  • corpus striatum — a striped mass of white and grey matter situated in front of the thalamus in each cerebral hemisphere
  • corruptibleness — The state or quality of being corruptible.
  • cottage pudding — plain cake covered with a sweet sauce
  • countercampaign — a campaign responding to another campaign
  • counterpetition — a formal request for legal action submitted to a court by a respondent who has received a petition
  • counterplotting — Present participle of counterplot.
  • counterpointing — Present participle of counterpoint.
  • counterpunching — Present participle of counterpunch.
  • country bumpkin — an awkward, simple, rustic person
  • county palatine — the lands of a count palatine
  • courting couple — a pair of lovers
  • cpu info center — (processor)   An old website at the University of California at Berkeley describing many different computers and their performance.
  • cricopharyngeus — (anatomy) Part of the inferior pharyngeal constrictor, arising from the cricoid cartilage.
  • cryptosporidium — any parasitic sporozoan protozoan of the genus Cryptosporidium, species of which are parasites of birds and animals and can be transmitted to humans, causing severe abdominal pain and diarrhoea (cryptosporidiosis)
  • cushion capital — a capital, used in Byzantine, Romanesque, and Norman architecture, in the form of a bowl with a square top
  • cut (up) didoes — to behave in mischievous or silly way
  • deposit account — A deposit account is a type of bank account where the money in it earns interest.
  • direct coupling — conductive coupling between electronic circuits, as opposed to inductive or capacitative coupling
  • distributor cap — the cap of an engine's distributor that holds in place the wires from the distributor to the sparking plugs
  • drying-up cloth — a tea towel
  • duplicitousness — The state or condition of being duplicitous.
  • durchkomponiert — having a different tune for each section rather than having repeated melodies
  • elegiac couplet — a couplet composed of a dactylic hexameter followed by a dactylic pentameter
  • eleutherophobic — afraid of freedom
  • fission product — a nuclide produced either directly by nuclear fission or by the radioactive decay of such a nuclide
  • flange coupling — a driving coupling between rotating shafts that consists of flanges (or half couplings) one of which is fixed at the end of each shaft, the two flanges being bolted together with a ring of bolts to complete the drive
  • fourth republic — the republic established in France in 1945 and replaced by the Fifth Republic in 1958.
  • fusospirochetal — Relating to fusospirochetes.
  • fusospirochetes — Plural form of fusospirochete.
  • fuzzy computing — fuzzy logic
  • galvanic couple — voltaic couple.
  • gigantopithecus — a genus of extinct ape of southern Asia existing during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs, known only from very large fossil jaws and teeth and believed to be perhaps the biggest hominoid that ever lived.
  • graph colouring — (application)   A constraint-satisfaction problem often used as a test case in research, which also turns out to be equivalent to certain real-world problems (e.g. register allocation). Given a connected graph and a fixed number of colours, the problem is to assign a colour to each node, subject to the constraint that any two connected nodes cannot be assigned the same colour. This is an example of an NP-complete problem. See also four colour map theorem.
  • graph reduction — A technique invented by Chris Wadsworth where an expression is represented as a directed graph (usually drawn as an inverted tree). Each node represents a function call and its subtrees represent the arguments to that function. Subtrees are replaced by the expansion or value of the expression they represent. This is repeated until the tree has been reduced to a value with no more function calls (a normal form). In contrast to string reduction, graph reduction has the advantage that common subexpressions are represented as pointers to a single instance of the expression which is only reduced once. It is the most commonly used technique for implementing lazy evaluation.
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